Allow me to offer you a greeting for a blessed new year.

These annual thresholds of calendar offer us all an opportunity to begin anew with an albeit imaginary fresh slate.

But this year has been a little different for me, and you may feel the same.

My sense of peace and wellbeing has been off-kilter this year, and I find myself living with considerable and constant tension in life, most of which might be labeled “cultural.” It’s not the kind of tension that is exciting, suspenseful, and life-giving, but the sort of tension that is regressive, disturbing, and emptying.

Whether it is the obvious political issues which seem to confront us daily in the headlines or simply the care which must be exercised in the daily use of language, we’re not sure we know what specific words mean, and, worse, if there is any truth at all that is Truth-Truth — you know, true for everyone.

The very ground seems to be shifting.

The descriptors that I have found myself using as expressive of our times are words like “chaos,” “confusion,” “uncertainty.” And no one I know seems happy with that.

As we observe Epiphany this year, let us return to the Matthew 2 text, which is often referred to as “the slaughter of the innocents.” It feels oddly and uncomfortably familiar — as if we had just had our very own slaughter.

Matthew presents us the story of the eastern Magi coming to King Herod, who was pretty much a paranoid puppet of Rome, announcing that they had seen a star in the eastern sky that announced the birth of a new King — from the line of David, no less. Cue the anxiety and reactionary modalities of power.

The Magi were invited by Herod to continue their pursuit of that new king and return to his court to tell him all about it so that he might also go and worship him. Yeah, right. Can’t you just hear the voiceover of Uncle Scar from “The Lion King”?

Well, the Magi had their own visit from an angel of God, warning them NOT to return to Herod, but, instead, to go home by another way. Realizing that he had been outwitted by the Magi, Herod set into motion yet another death squad killing spree.

Herod’s response was the sword, and, as Matthew tells it, there was a wholesale massacre of baby boys, 2 years of age and younger in Bethlehem and its vicinity.

The threat to Herod? A baby.

Except that baby was Jesus.

That baby was the Lion of Judah. That baby was the Son of David, who would announce a new kingdom.

And the soundtrack to the announcement of Jesus’ birth in Herod’s palace was the noise of a deafening, screeching trainwreck. It is the sound of one powerful entity coming into head-on conflict with another, more powerful entity.

The conflict that many of us might be sensing in 2024, I believe, is an ancient one. Chaos, confusion, and power struggles have been with us forever. Scripture is full of such confrontations and their accompanying slaughter of innocent life.

Think about Pharaoh, as he looked out on his kingdom, troubled that the Hebrew people were getting a little too prosperous and a little too powerful and a little too plentiful. His solution? Kill the Hebrew baby boys. Wipe out a generation. And he gave instructions to the midwives to murder the newborn males. Except it didn’t work.

Through the courage and brave action of two young birthing experts, Moses was delivered from that slaughter and his life was preserved through a little bassinet in the bullrushes and a 40-year side trip to the very palace of the King of Egypt.

We know that story.

Following some personal struggle with his own identity and vocational call, Moses led the people of God right out of the slavery of Egypt. And, through the initiation of the original Passover event, they came into a Covenant with God that delivered them ultimately into a land of promise.

Ironically, or, perhaps, strategically and poetically, in escaping Herod’s death plot, the holy family fled in the opposite direction, from the Promised Land right back into Egypt. In time, Jesus actually became the Passover Lamb, a Savior who was led to slaughter on a cross in order that He might deliver all of us.

The sounds of chaos, the sense of anxiety, the uncertainty of our culture are marks of one kingdom crashing into another, more powerful kingdom. It’s an enormous crash, with an immense debris field. And the casualties are many.

We are feeling it afresh in 2024.

It is the clash of the kingdom of darkness with the kingdom of God. And those two kingdoms have opposite agendas, methods, and outcomes.

In Jesus, the Kingdom of God holds up God’s ethic of love and this love, Jesus says, needs to be deep enough to turn your enemies into friends. The kingdom of God is marked by sacrifice, serving, and forgiving and generosity, not with violence and protectionism and greed.

Can you sense the collision of kingdoms? We cannot live in both, and, if we decide to accept Jesus’ invitation to become a citizen of the kingdom of heaven (Philippians 3:20), then the reality is that we will live and work in conflicted times.

As the old gospel song proclaims, “this world is not my home, I’m just a-passing through. My treasures are laid up, somewhere beyond the blue. The angels beckon me from heaven’s open door, and I can’t feel at home in this world, anymore (Jim Reeves).”

The kingdoms continue to collide, but, thanks be to God, His eternal, unshakable kingdom has broken through in victory, in Jesus.

May the Peace of Christ be with you all in 2024.

Warren Hoffman is a 43-year veteran of pastoral ministry and considers himself a native of Alpena. He is married to his ministry partner and beloved, Laura Hoffman.